“We need to get you to a medic,” the voice said with finality. They hoisted me over their shoulder with ease.
“What are you doing?” I yelled, beating at the stranger’s back.
Then, I heard a squeak from high overhead.
From behind a chimney, a small silhouette emerged. The squirrel surveyed me from his perch. The bastard must have returned to the roof to watch my demise. I arched my neck as much as I could from my place behind this fool who’d ruined everything. Squirrels couldn’t smile; I knew they couldn’t, but even through my tears, I swore a devilish grin played across his face.
He held the Crown Jewel Tulip high in his grimy paws.
I helplessly pointed to the chimney looming over us.
“Please,” I bit out. “The squirrel, he has my”—my vision swirled, inky blackness creeping onto the edges—“He has my”—bile rose into my mouth, the salty tang on my tongue—“He has my tulip!” I finally cried.
Then I vomited all over the stranger’s back, my last bit of strength finally sputtering out as we made our way through awakening Moss.
With a cracked head and a broken heart, our hero found herself… rocky, lifeless, and a little hungry, with zero soul-realizations.
—opening line attempt 9
I awoke to groaning.Mygroaning.
Pain lanced through my head, and my body jolted with unease. Where was I? What had happened? Heavy quilts weighed down on my chest, threatening to suffocate me. I made the mistake of moving my foot and immediately remembered that I’d shredded it on broken glass.
Chasing after a squirrel.
The fog cleared as my memories came into sharp focus.
The Crown Jewel Tulip was gone. The significance of that loss settled deep into my chest. That tulip wasn’t just the centerpiece for Eldrene’s crown every three years. The tulip symbolized the hope of our realm.
A fact we mortals try to forget, lest our fear overcome us and ruin the precarious balance that has been set in place.
Everyone knew the story.
A millennium ago, the Prince—his name now lost to time—sought to end the realm with withering magic. A dark magic that sucked the life out of everything and everyone around it, warping all it touched into an unrecognizable version of itself. His magic seeped into the land and spread like poison. Villages turned against each other; peace treaties were torn into shreds; war was imminent. Mortals, magical or not, had no chance of stopping its reach.
Eldrene was the only Goddess still walking the earth after the Elden Wars—the rest had retreated to the stars. She was the sole being powerful enough to stop withering magic from causing more harm. So she poured her power into the land, to contain the contagion. In doing so, she ended the Prince, enveloping him in her light—blotting out his darkness forever.
But the withering magic was too powerful. Once her power connected to the spreading darkness, she could not break the bond. Withering magic drank from her power, her life force, until she was almost drained dry of both. She had been willing to sacrifice every last drop if it meant ending the withering magic for good, but even that wouldn’t vanquish it entirely.
With barely any magic and only a whisper of life left, Eldrene wove the last of her spirit into a flower, binding herself to this realm forever, sacrificing the rest of her days to fighting the darkness that still seeks to end all.
As long as she walks this earth, withering magic will be held at bay. Though she can’twalkmuch of it. The day she sacrificed herself, she was in Moss Wood, and in Moss Wood she must stay. That’s where the essence of her power is thestrongest, where she channels what she can to combat withering magic far and wide.
But this takes a great toll on Eldrene. Her power is not what it once was, and withering magic tries every day to infiltrate the land she sacrificed herself to protect so long ago. Without her former strength, she must rely on the dedication of mortals. Belief, while not inherently magical, is a powerful thing. Belief is what renews her life force every three years.
The flower she bound herself to, in truth, does protect her life. But only through the people’s belief. It casts hope through the realm. The hope that everything will be all right, in turn, funnels into the bloom, which feeds back into the land, into the people, and into Eldrene herself. In essence, ever since the Prince died, the realm has operated on its own water cycle of hope, so to speak.
Eldrene bound herself to a tulip—a symbol of new beginnings, of love itself. Nonmagical tulips that needn’t hold dark magic at bay while also carrying the belief of an entire realm normally bloom and die, leaving behind a seed pod for future flowers. The Crown Jewel Tulip, however, produces only a single seed.
That seed remains with Eldrene’s Forest Train for two years until it grows into a bulb. A precious, sacred thing. The only one of its kind, the future of Nestryia resting within. In the bulb’s final months before the Goddess Celebration, it’s bestowed into the care of a Town Gardener. For only those with garden magic can tend to the bulbs; luckily, there were plenty of us.
Luckier still, my garden magic also worked on the blub despite it not beingquitenormal.
Never once had someone lost the tulip. Never once had someone jeopardized the entire realm.
Had I just killed a Goddess? Had I just doomed all of Nestryia?
Even if the tulip served as symbol alone, the Celebration ensured that the realm knew our Goddess protected us. Without that hope, what would fill in the gaps? Fear had no place; if fear took hold, who knows what darkness could crop up that not even Eldrene could stop.
